Ben Davies says making the University of Bath reimburse the lost £3 million would 'negatively impact the reputation of graduates'

by Ben Davies: University of Bath SU President

06:00, 8 Mar 2018Updated10:12, 8 Mar 2018

Ben Davies, president of University of Bath student union

Dear Wera,

I was disappointed and saddened by your call for the university to use students’ tuition fees to pay for council tax.

This ignores the fact that in your role as our elected representative you are best placed to actually fix this issue by lobbying the government to reimburse local authorities for the cuts they have received.

This call for a learning tax on students will harm a fifth of your constituents. Students now contribute the most to university finances, amounting to over half of its income.

Getting the university to reimburse this £3 million learning tax will be directly taken away from students’ ability to learn and develop, and negatively impact on the reputation of Bath graduates you speak so highly of.

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It was your party’s coalition government that caused university tuition fees to be tripled, now landing students a bill of over £9,000 a year to study.

Furthermore, the call to have students be charged more to live in this city harms students' ability to learn and prosper, and is once again putting more financial burden on students.

The university isn’t an endless spring of money. It is the student population who funds it to operate. Any additional charges will only harm the people who come to Bath to learn.

This call will only be a tax on learning, a tax on being a student and a tax on being a person in Bath. Students are already being priced out of Bath, with skyrocketing rents, limited available housing and ever increasing tuition fees.

Wera Hobhouse was elected Bath MP in June 2017

The burden faced by our local services is not because of students or the university. It is a political choice of austerity from government who are not funding our communities.

It is a political choice to not give enough money to our social services, not investing in social housing and our health services. It is a political choice that you as our MP have the ability to fight against, and instead you are trying to push financial burden back on students.

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You are the representative for all of Bath, and that includes the student community.

With students now more than ever engaged in the democratic process and with the local elections next year, we will fight to ensure that student voices are heard and that the council and MP will finally listen to our concerns, and not push for more anti-young person or anti-student policies and focus on the real solutions to supporting our city.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Davies

The SU University of Bath President 2017/18

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